Al here. I work for a London based waste carrier. I am pretty green so am very happy to be working somewhere that contributes to reducing landfill: as a company, we pride ourselves on recycling over 75% of what we collect. When you consider that what we collect is basically the same type of waste that people would dump in a skip (ie we have no control over what we collect, whether it is recyclable) I think that's pretty awesome. Anyway, I digress...

Been looking around for a enviro/recycling forum for rubbish banter (oops, can't help myself) for a while, happy to have found this place. My purpose here is informed discussion intermingled with idle timewasting chat.

I have had an idea in my mind for years of starting a company that removes garbage from gas stations (for a fee) and then recycles all the recyclable containers, oil containers (and the oil in them) and other recyclables found in high percentage in gas station garbage. I have too many other goals to ever do that but it is on my mind a lot.

I have had an idea in my mind for years of starting a company that removes garbage from gas stations (for a fee) and then recycles all the recyclable containers, oil containers (and the oil in them) and other recyclables found in high percentage in gas station garbage. I have too many other goals to ever do that but it is on my mind a lot.

Heh. I have a friend who works for a company that does exactly that in the UK (100% recycling rate), but it tends to be more for garages that petrol stations. They have been pretty successful although they are now diversifying as I think they found the garage vertical was a bit small.

Where I live, recycling is all but impossible. We've switched to the curly lightbulbs and we compost everything but we can't find anyplace where we can recycle glass, alum or plastic.

BTW, we just heard of a method that makes newspapers break down. Don't know if this is true or not but a friend tells us that if you put newspaper into a bucket and then pee on them, they'll break down in the compost heap. Anyone else heard of this?

put newspaper into a bucket and then pee on them, they'll break down in the compost

it is all to do with the pH... or should I say pee-H of the compost. One problem with most compost of toilet waste is the high level of urine makes the compost too acidic and too wet so it is recommended you add peat or leaves to soak up the moisture and soap or lime to make the compost more basic (opposite of acidic). Newspaper is both dry and basic so can do both functions and shredded newspaper is added to some compost systems for that very purpose.